The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out

Summary

In hisgroundbreaking and controversial book The DIM Hypothesis, Dr. Leonard Peikoff casts apenetrating new light on the process of human thought and thereby on Westernculture and history.

In this far-reaching study, Peikoff identifies the threemethods people use to integrate concrete data into a whole, as when connectingdiverse experiments by a scientific theory, separate laws into a constitution,or single events into a story. The first method, in which data is integratedthrough rational means, he calls Integration. The second, which employs nonrationalmeans, he calls Misintegration. The third is Disintegration—which is nihilism,the desire to tear things apart.

In The DIM Hypothesis Peikoff demonstratesthe power of these three methods in shaping the West by using the categories toexamine the culturally representative fields of literature, physics, education,and politics. His analysis illustrates how the historical trends in each fieldhave been dominated by one of these three categories, not only today but duringthe whole progression of Western culture from its beginning in ancient Greece.

Extrapolating from the historical pattern he identifies,Peikoff concludes by explaining why the lights of the West are going out—andpredicts the most likely future for the United States.